Because the Earth is a small charged body moving
in a large cell of plasma, explanations of all physical phenomena in,
on, and near the Earth must take the electrical behavior of plasma into
account.

Earth's atmosphere is an insulating medium
separating the charge on the surface from the charge in the surrounding
space plasma. A complex of "double layers" distributes the potential
difference between the surface and space much like a series of
capacitors. We detect the electrical field of the bottommost layer in
the fair weather surface field of around 100 volts per meter.

This field beneath a thunderstorm may be 100 times
stronger as the atmospheric dielectric is "shorted out" over many
vertical kilometers by thunderclouds. As in a capacitor, when the
insulating medium breaks down a discharge occurs between the electrodes.
We can readily understand that lightning in a thunderstorm would be such
a discharge. However there are other forms of discharge besides the arc
mode of lightning--diffuse glow discharges, such as the sprites that
occur above thunderstorms, and, especially, "dark" discharges. Although
the latter may carry significant current, we are usually unaware of them
because we can't see or otherwise sense them. But they may have visible
secondary effects.

Close observation of laboratory arc discharges
reveals that an electrical "wind" surrounds and often precedes the arc.
The developing discharge sweeps the surrounding air along with the
charge carriers of the current. This wind appears as inflows and
updrafts as well as outflows and downdrafts. It can lift dust particles
and erode surfaces. By analogy, we must then question the accepted
explanation of thunderstorms as being caused solely by convection of hot
air: The storms may instead be the visible secondary effects of an
invisible dielectric breakdown in the Earth's atmosphere.

The up- and down-drafts, the in- and out-flows,
would be atmospheric responses to "dark discharge" electrical currents
more than to temperature differences. Furthermore, the suspension of
particles--charged dust and polar molecules (water)--would be largely a
result of electrostatic forces sweeping both particles and air along in
the electrical field of the discharge. This would explain the spherical
shape of hailstones, for example, which do not show the distortion that
would be expected if they were formed by being blown upward by strong
wind friction forces.

This leads to the more general idea that all
weather may be caused, or at least influenced, by the electrical
interactions between Earth and the surrounding plasma. Because this
larger possibility has never been considered, critical tests have not
been devised that would distinguish between the competing explanations.
But there are tests that cast doubt on the prevailing theory.

Convection is well understood. The theory of gas
behavior in a convecting system is developed with great exactitude. But
the weather forecasts derived from convection theory are more than mere
applications of theory: They are also tests of that theory, and a wrong
forecast is a falsification of the theory. The significant fraction of
erroneous forecasts by weathermen is an indication that the theory is
missing something. The Electric Universe suggests that what's missing is
a consideration of the electrical properties of plasma.